Modern Technology: Does the cost outweigh the reward?

Technology is designed to improve and enrich our lives. But at what cost?

Most everything that you do has a cost and a benefit. Take a look at your life. You decide to go out with friends on a Saturday night. You have a great time, make some memories, but you don’t study those extra couple hours for your chemistry exam.

Or maybe you decide to do the homework instead of going out with friends. You feel more prepared for the test, but have major FOMO.

We do this with people too. What are the costs and benefits of the relationships we choose to make and keep? Why do we choose to spend time with certain people above others?

We are constantly weighing our options in our heads. We consider the pros and cons, then we make the decisions that seem more beneficial to us, either in the short or long run, and avoid the ones that seem too costly to justify.

And it’s not just individuals that do this. Our society is constantly in a cost vs. benefit battle too. 

Let’s apply this to technology.

Think about a few major inventions that have influenced our world in the last several hundred years. The printing press. The airplane. The telephone. These things have changed and shaped our world into what it is today. Often, we focus on the benefits, because there are many, but oftentimes we ignore the cultural costs of such inventions.

Now think about our postmodern world, and the technology that runs it. What are its costs and benefits? They may be distributed unevenly among groups and individuals, depending on socioeconomic status, age, geography, etc. 

Here’s a list of major technologies that we use daily, as well their costs and benefits.

1. Phone and video calls

• Cost: Lack of social skills/face-to-face connection, less in-person connection

• Benefit: Being able to talk to people who live thousands of miles away, reconnecting with old friends after a long time, online education, working from home

1. Digital and phone cameras

• Cost: Loss of privacy, feeling the need to document everything instead of living in the moment

• Benefit: being able to store and recall memories easily, capturing moments and easily sharing them with friends and family

1. Search engines

• Cost: Lack of interest to learn things by experience, lack of privacy, asking for advice from Internet instead of real people

• Benefit: Having all information at our fingertips

1. GPS

• Cost: being unable to get around or follow directions without a phone or a paper map; completely dependent upon a device

• Benefit: Getting anywhere you want, expanding your horizon by seeing new places and saving travel time
  

1. Online streaming

• Cost: loss of interest to make our own entertainment, loss of activity and mobility while "binge-watching"

• Benefit: easily accessing entertainment from a variety of sources; cheaper than renting or going to the movies
  

1. YouTube, TikTok and other video sharing platforms

• Cost: inappropriate, violent, and manipulated videos that are designed to confuse and cause conflict

• Benefit: entertainment, the ability to create and share content, and having ideas for a variety of things just by looking it up

1. Food delivery services

• Cost: more expensive, promotes laziness and less interaction, takes a longer amount of time

• Benefit: conveniences, allows you to do other things while you wait for your food to arrive

1. Video games

• Costs: An increase in violence among youth and dependency upon screens for entertainment 

• Benefits: creating social experiences for people, a way to destress and unwind

1. Social media

• Cost: comparison, rising rates of low-self esteem, depression, and feelings of isolation

• Benefit: ability to stay in contact with others, sharing valuable information, ideas, talents- things that make the world good in a matter of seconds

1. Photoshop

• Cost: ability to enhance and improve images beyond a camera's original capacity

• Benefit: creating and manipulating unrealistic images that do not reflect reality

At this point, our use of these technologies is so embedded into our daily routine that we cannot imagine life without them. Rarely do we take the time to think about the prices paid for such things. Whatever the price may be, it will not stop the rate of technological advancement in our world today.

We must keep our eyes open going forward instead of blindly accepting what is happening in the world around us. It comes down to making conscious decisions.

What are the costs and benefits of your technology use? Is it helping or harming you? What can you let go of, and what will you keep doing?